A processing and/or inspection line provided with an inspection station is disclosed in European patent EP 0 530 868 in the name of the applicant. In this patent, an apparatus for processing poultry is proposed, including a suspension conveyor for conveying the birds with the legs suspended therefrom. A processing station is disposed along a portion of the suspension conveyor, having processing means for removing the entrails from the abdominal cavity as the birds are conveyed by the suspension conveyor. A further conveyor synchronously driven with the suspension conveyor is disposed substantially parallel to and at a predetermined distance from a portion of the suspension conveyor. The further conveyor is disposed after the processing apparatus for receiving the separated entrails and conveying the entrails along the inspection station at the same time as the corresponding birds are carried by the suspension conveyor along the inspection station.
With the currently applied high speeds of the conveyor line for the poultry, conveying approximately 6000 birds or more per hour, a problem may occur where the poultry starts swinging in the conveyor line, and this is not because they are enjoying themselves. In particular, the birds start swinging back-and-forth in the conveying direction of the conveyor line, which may result in inadequate processing of the poultry by a processing station adjacent the line, or unreliable inspection of the poultry and the entrails by a veterinary inspector standing next to the line, since due to the swinging the one-on-one correspondence between the poultry and the entrails is lost. Another problem in the latter situation is that moisture and/or body fluids like blood may drip from a bird to entrails that belong to another bird resulting in contamination which should be avoided.